Malachi O’Connor

Malachi O’Connor, Principal, has worked for more than 20 years with senior executives in a broad range of for-profit and non-profit organizations. He works with leaders to implement systemic changes that strengthen cultural values while measurably improving performance and productivity. He has worked in many industries, including healthcare and life sciences, insurance and financial services, foundations and higher education, and has contributed significantly to the development of CFAR’s change methodology.

Trained as an ethnographer, Mal helps organizations meet the challenges of changing behavior in the service of new strategic imperatives. This makes him particularly attuned to how people think—to why and how differences matter, and to the impact those differences have on achieving desired results. He works with clients to harness the often-tacit beliefs and assumptions of employees, managers and leaders, working with, rather than against resistance to generate improved performance. His work has included strategy and system-wide strategic change, board and executive development, team building, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, performance management and the business case for cultural diversity. 

Mal is an experienced speaker and meeting facilitator. He has spoken to both large and small executive audiences in corporations, trade associations, executive education programs, and industry and other business groups. Some of these include The Conference Board, the American College of Healthcare Executives, ELAM, The Healthcare Business Women’s Association, the National Center for State Courts, Yankee Alliance, the American Pediatrics Association, as well as the leadership teams of numerous CFAR clients.

Mal is co-author of The Moment You Can’t Ignore: When Big Trouble Leads to a Great Future, published by PublicAffairs Books in October 2014.

Mal holds a BA in English Literature from Fairfield University, and a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, ACHE Massachusetts, the American Folklore Society, NEHI, and the A.K. Rice Institute, and is a faculty member in the Program in Organizational Consultation at the William Alanson White Institute, and at the Cornell University School of Industrial Relations.